“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”~Paul Boese

Of all the challenges I offer in this 6-week series, this one has the potential of being the most transformative.

If you harbor deep resentment, if your life is scared by the pain of past offenses, if hate is eating you up, you know exactly what I mean.

The Effects of Resentment

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” ~Malachy McCourtro

When you hold on to resentment, anger or hatred, letting it eat you up from the inside out, your mind gets stuck in a continuous loop. You replay the offense over and over again, unable to free yourself from the person you most want to get away from. You feel stuck in a dark place and feel like there’s no way out of that living hell.

Your soul is cankered. Your heart feels cleaved in two. Your mind wanders in a fog, trapped in a mental loop. You can’t interact with the person who has offended you without feeling your insides boil. Your guts are twisted in knots. Your sense of justice violated.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Forgiveness is not pretending the people or person in your past never really hurt you. It’s not accepting them fully into your life either. If they are hostile people, it would be very unwise to bring them too close no matter the relation.

It’s not closing eyes or being naïve or putting on rose-colored glasses and asking an abuser to babysit your kids.

I’m not even saying lawsuits or pursuing legal justice is not the right course of action. Circumstances dictate such things. But even if pursuing legal recourse, you can let the ill will go. You can let the anger and condemnation go. You can pursue justice with a pure heart.

What Forgiveness Is

Forgiveness is the act of letting go of the pain and resentment. It’s to step away from the mental loop. It’s to sincerely want the best for the person or people who hurt or offended you.

Now, what’s best for the offender may very well be legal remedies to help them step up and take moral, legal or financial responsibility for their behavior, or to force them to stop and get help.

But to forgive is to open your heart as you would your hand and let all the pent-up negative emotion drift away. It’s to wash out the putrid decay from your heart and let go.

Forgiveness sucks the poison from your wounded heart. It replaces the hate and resentment and anger and obsessive desire for retribution with peace and happiness. Not a bad trade-off by anyone’s standards!

What Forgiveness Does

Forgiveness frees you. It lifts you. It throws off a weight that has weighed you down and robbed you of even elusive peace and infrequent joy.

Forgiveness opens you to leaving behind the pain and sorrow and guilt and anger and all the ugliness that is associated with the offense and the offender.

It also allows you to move on. To finally breathe. To begin life again, almost as if being reborn into a new, cleaner life, stripped and washed clear of the grey ooze of resentment.

The Challenge of Forgiveness

But forgiving someone who has legitimately hurt you can be very difficult, especially if the abuse you sustained was prolonged or the person is a family member who should have been your biggest protector.

How do you forgive an offense when it has buried itself deep in the grit of your personality, when it has been mixed into the very mortar between the bricks from which you have built your life?

How do you forgive a person of wrongs when the offense was so intimately personal and intentional and wounding?

How do you forgive the unrepentant, the unremorseful, the unchanged, the unapologetic, when justice was never served, when wrongs were never confessed, when abuse was never admitted or is ongoing?

The Fear of Forgiveness

Resentment and all that comes with holding onto the pain of not forgiving is understandable, of course, but it’s also deeply self-destructive. It’s hurting you more than it can ever hurt the offender. Every second you continue to hold onto the pain, you continue to drag yourself under the crushing wheels of life’s bus.

Sometimes we think forgiveness is letting the offender off the hook. But just what hook are they being let off? Just because you spend so much time feeling the pain doesn’t mean they do. They may be in the bus, but only you are stuck under its wheels.

Prison Cells of the Heart

To be filled with anger and resentment, to hold a grudge and refuse forgiveness is like tossing the offender into a prison cell in your heart and throwing away the key.

The only problem is that the prison you keep your offender locked in, also imprisons you. If visions of punishment fill your heart for them, then visions of punishment fill your heart. The resentment is kept inside of you. That’s not what’s supposed to be there.

The Gift of Forgiveness

No one can earn your forgiveness. It is not a right. You are not going to forgive someone because they have done the work of repentance and now deserve what you may not be ready to offer.

Besides, you are not forgiving them for them anyway. This isn’t their gift. You are forgiving them for you. You are going to finally cut the emotional cord that has bound you to your offender for far too long.

The greatest gift of forgiveness is not to the forgiven, but to the forgiver. It is for you to cherish and feel and enjoy. It is your freedom you are offering yourself.

You’ve Held on Long Enough

It’s time to free yourself of the blood-clotting hatred that blocks your happiness, peace and contentment. It’s time to loosen your grip and let go. It’s time to put down the gavel and let God be the judge and jury for a change.

Stop worrying about what others in your past have been or what they failed to be. It’s history now. It happened and has been written into the pages of the past.

But it’s a book that you don’t have to read and reread over and over again. Close that book and start writing a new one. Fill the right now is-ness of life with something more liberating and rewarding and beautiful. Create your own story and start living that story instead.

The Details

The way I’m going to approach this challenge is to invite you back daily to learn another strategy to help you with the work of forgiving.

Each day will be another tip, a piece of advice, as story, a suggestion or two that can help you finally let go and be free of your inner prison.

I’m approaching the challenge this way because I’m convinced that most people will read through a list of ideas, possibly try one or two suggestions, often half-heartedly, then move on, never truly applying the steps and ideas that can actually help them forgive and return peace and happiness where anger currently resides.

So the challenge will be for you to try each of the daily tips one day at a time on your way to complete forgiveness, not merely opening the cell door, but completely demolishing the prison from inside your heart, expunging the poison and cutting the cord that binds you to the pain and resentment forever.

The Challenge!

So are you ready to start?

Now that you’ve committed to the challenge, I’ll leave you with the first step. Try it out and come back tomorrow for another step or tip you can try to move you closer to your goal.

FORGIVENESS 101: Day One

Write a letter to your offender, whether they are here or passed on doesn’t matter because you won’t send it. But pour everything out onto the paper. Write the details, the feelings, the effects of the offense, everything. This may fill two-paragraphs or two novels. The important part is to get it all on paper.

Writing can be surprisingly clarifying, putting things into perspective, seeing the whole, possibly for the first time, capturing what may have been brushed under the carpet. It can also be quite cathartic.

This writing exercise is the first step because it forces you to start this process with a very clear picture of what and who you are forgiving and the circumstances surrounding it.

This step just may be the most difficult step you take because it requires that you relive what you may have spent years trying to forget. Don’t be surprised if the floodgates open and the tears flow. Sometimes just writing it down does so much to unstop our plugged up insides because we never allowed ourselves to express the pain in the past.

By the way, this step (and all subsequent ones) work just as well if the person you need to forgive is yourself.

Caveat: If, however, you are clinically depressed–or suspect you may be–or have suicidal thoughts, do this only under the direction and supervision of a mental health professional.

Your turn …

So, are you in?
Please share your thoughts or concerns with us:

Is there someone you feel the need to forgive?

What have the obstacles been to letting go so far?

Or, if you feel you have successfully forgiven, how were you able to do it?

31 Comments

I used to be terrible with forgiveness and held onto resentment for no reason. I guess you could say for no logical reason, but of course that was the case since it was emotion. Lately I realized holding on does nothing good for you. Literally, it does nothing to benefit either you or anyone else. Realizing that it’s futile lets me forgive and truthfully, there’s no one I still need to forgive.Vincent recently posted … How to Avoid Burnout: Getting Things Done Efficiently

So true, Vincent. In fact, it does the exact opposite. Not only does withholding forgiveness not do anything FOR you, it harms you more than most people realize.

What a great realization you had that there’s no benefit to holding on to offenses. To live a life without grudges or ongoing resentment or fixating on some real or imagined wrong is a liberating way to live. So happy to hear you have no one you still need to forgive, Vincent. That kind of personal growth must feel amazing!

I used to find that the hardest things to forgive was me – who I turned out to be or rather not to be. And I also found it hard to forgive life for being so outrageously fun, exiting and all that when I felt like lying on the bottom of a swimming pool, unable to connect and participate. I know I did and do good things, but the errors and cruelties of a past of lesser understanding still haunts me. I’m sure all those good has either forgotten or forgiven long ago, and those who haven’t I have probably forgotten. No balance on any accounts here, I fear.
In truth, there are people that I really dislike, and like any else I meet my share of full blown idiots and bigots. But I have to let go of other peoples successes, failures, talents or misgivings. It’s their own busy-ness, I have to obey the Law of Allowing for Flow to work at least in my life. So after many years, there is nothing to forgive, nothing to expect. It sounds boring, but it really is rather peaceful. It’s an odd sense of power or control on a very private and personal level.
There are one or two persons in my life that I still think are ecological mistakes, they should never been alive for that long or at least never to propagate. When they pop up in my mind, I think of something pleasant and leave them in the realm of unimportance where they always belonged. They have caused me enough pain before I grew wise enough to let them go. Let them fry in their own fat, not in mine.
It’s a funny thing, but it possible to choose. When I meet people that are a goodly influence, I share their joy of life for as long as it is given to me. When I meet the opposite, it feels like I am protected by some kind of Star War power shield, it just doesn’t penetrate if only I leave it alone. Takes a firm decision, some practice and a child’s faith that it can actually work.
So the Boss can do the forgiving, and as I understand it, He likes that.
Tomorrow they’ll wake up being them, and I am lucky to wake up being me. That’s often all the revenge I need. Who am I to judge, anyway? And if I don’t judge much of often, what is there to forgive?
Forgiving good ol’ blundering me is almost a full time job, because we’re always so tough on ourselves. If I find a little spare time to judge others, I get into this forgiving others thing. But since you insist on being exactly who you are, and there is preciously little I can do about it, I love your imperfections just as much as your perfections. If possible, I would share your joys as well as your suffering, this being the germanic symantic origin of the word ‘care’, and we all do as best we can.
Nah, there aint much to judge.

Makes a lot of sent. One great lesson I’ve learned in life is to forgive and never hold grudges. People will hurt and betray us along the way. But we should learn to forgive and move on set ourselves free from pain.

Now that you have written out the circumstances related to the person you feel the need to forgive in all its gory detail, it’s time to take the next step. Sometimes, that step is an attitude adjustment.

Tip #1: If you are having a difficult time extending forgiveness to someone, it may be that you are idealizing what they should have been. But truthfully, we can’t be any more than we are. Most people don’t fall very far from the apple tree, after all. We end up something pretty close to what some combination of our parents were in basic attitude, character and parenting.

So the point I’m making here is that while bad behavior can’t be excused by bad parenting, it does open a door of understanding. The way you were treated very well may be an extension of the way they were raised. Sometimes recognizing that fact can give birth to the beginnings of compassion. That can be enough to take us a few steps closer to forgiveness.

Tip #2: Personally, when someone says something offensive to me, I tend to shrug it off and attribute it to the other person having a bad day. I recently heard a story of a mother-in-law turning horribly abusive to everyone in her life. She’s threatened to have people arrested and even murdered. There was lots of pain and resentment in the family. Just now, they are coming to the realization that she likely is suffering from dementia, perhaps Alzheimer’s disease.

That, of course, changes everything. Such a realization will likely elicit more sympathy than bitterness. So if someone is offensive, assume the worst, that they are dying of some terrible disease or have lost people in their lives in tragic conditions or were the victims of horrific abuse as children. You never know, if they are acting ugly and abusive to you, they very well may have gone through tragic circumstances and just never figured out how to handle it.

Your homework for today: When you start to feel stuck on the mental loop, replaying the scene, feeling the acrimony rise, interrupt the scene and picture the offender as a little child, hurt, scared, alone, fearful, unsure, feeling like the world is against them, having nowhere to turn. Now let sympathy or empathy or compassion seep in, even if for a moment. Perhaps your brain will override the effort. That’s fine. If you can even feel it for a moment, that may be enough to crack the hermetic seal on the door to eventual forgiveness.

Now, whenever the loop begins to play, interrupt it again with similar images. Keep at it and let us know how it goes.

Tip #3: AS mentioned in the post, let God or karma or the Universe or Life take over. Let go of the burden of judge and jury. Allow cosmic justice to take the matter into hand and stop obsessing over the need to see light shine brightly on the injustice you sustained.

Tip #4: This is a difficult step to take, but it can be very effective, even if it doesn’t change things over night, feels forced at first and even builds some resentment in the beginning. But wishing the ill-doer good will can start to soften the hardened heart you currently feel as a knot in your chest. This may include “sending positive vibes” while meditating or while on a jog around the block, or praying for the person, asking God to heal their wounds. But however you do it, putting yourself in a loving role, one of secret spiritual benefactor, changes the relationship and can lead to forgiveness.

Tip #5: For a taste of what forgiving your offender might feel like and as practice, try imagining forgiveness. This may sound strange at first glance, but athletes do this all the time. Studies even confirm that an athlete who imagines practicing his free throws does measurably better than an athlete who simply misses practice. In other words, doing something mentally helps us do it physically. So imagining forgiving someone in great detail, thinking through the words you would say, the feelings you would experience, the release and freedom and joy and everything else you might experience for finally forgiving your antagonist can take you several steps closer to completing the challenge.

Tip #6: Practice empathy. While this may be difficult to do, try putting yourself in their shoes, seeing the cause of the strained relationship from their point of view. The difficulty of this tip is in the nature of the offense. But see the person as fully human, not merely as Enemy Number One. Wen you can walk a mile in their moccasins, you just may be able to see the offense in a totally different light and take a huge leap to forgiveness.

Tip #7: Practice gratitude. This one is admittedly a difficult one for those who have held grudges and feel deep resentment for deep wounds inflicted by an unrepentant jerk, but give it a try. I know, it can even sound ridiculous at first glance, but it’s really not. Think about the relationship and even the conflict or situation or event for which you are most pained. I bet that if you thought long and hard enough, you could discover something you learned or something that led to you becoming stronger in some area, or perhaps it led you to meet someone who has become or is becoming an important addition to your life.

Take the time to think this through and maybe even write a list of benefits that came from the problems you’ve had. This isn’t to discount the negative or even necessarily be thankful the hurtful situation occurred, but it can lighten the load you carry when you can focus more attention and therefore gratitude for at least those benefits that came out of the hurt and pain.

Tip #8: Picture the pain, the hate, the desire for revenge, the resentment and grudge as a ball of fire, or mud or ooze, or whatever you choose to think of it as, as visualize yourself at the end of a pier, or a cliff, or the edge of the earth (as in the earth is flat scenario), and ceremoniously, remove the ball of negative emotion from a satchel, see the surging anger and feel its enormity, hold it over the edge of the precipice, and drop it over the edge (or watch it float away, if you prefer), and sink or drift into oblivion.

This strategy can truly help if done sincerely. You may also find yourself needing to repeat the process from time to time, but it can provide a sort of release that allows you breathing room as some of the other tips are worked on. Admittedly, this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for such a low price of admission, I would recommend you give it a run for the money anyway to see what happens.

Tip #9: The way we think about an event (or person or situation) creates the internal mood for how we will likely feel about the event (person or situation). So one way to forgive another, is to change what and how and how often we think about that person and the circumstances for which we harbor the crippling resentment. I’ve alluded to this already. Gratitude and compassion are attitudinal shifts. Praying for the person is certainly work at rewiring how you think about the offender. So this tip can be used as fuel to keep at those tips I’ve already included as you redouble your efforts at extending forgiveness and freeing yourself.

When the angry, hateful thoughts pop up, change them. Recondition your mind to no longer need to hold onto the offense. Stop caring that the event occurred and start looking to recreate something better in your life.

Tip #10: Accept full responsibility for your life and circumstances. You may have had no control over the offense that has brought you to the emotional and spiritual place you’re at right now. You may have been young. The offender may have been a parent. You may have lost a job or your self-esteem or the life of a loved one. I’m not suggesting you accept responsibility for the event. You may have truly been victimized. But often, there is more resentment for the life it led to than for the event itself. IN other words, we can sometimes feel more hatred for the person for the life we now live than for the thing that originally offended us. The person is blamed for current life circumstances. And so we hold the person in contempt as we make the link from the offense to our miserable circumstances and level all responsibility for the circumstances on the offense and offender.

But, in almost all cases, that’s just not true. You may have been fired by a jealous or vindictive boss. But it was not your boss that let the firing take away your sense of self or self-worth or self-confidence. You may have been abused as a kid, but you choose to allow that fact to affect how you will treat your kids and who you end up marrying or stay married to. The drunk driver may have totally changed your life forever. But the irresponsible driver is not responsible for how you deal with the tragedy. Once you can accept full responsibility for the life you lead (not all events that happen in your life), you will be able to throw off much of the burden of forgiveness because you will finally recognize that much of the effect the offender has had on your life has not been a logical extension of the offense.

The final thought on forgiveness is the act of final release. We often harbor the deepest resentment for those who have never admitted the offense, or otherwise never paid for their crime or taken full responsibility for what they did. It grinds on us and keeps the insult or injury fresh in our minds and fresh in our hearts like a knife still stuck in a wound we keep bumping or feeling compelled to twist ourselves from time to time.

This final thought is admittedly easier for those who believe in ultimate justice. If you believe if a Just Universe or Karma or some sort of Final Judgment before God or some Higher Power, then it’s easier to release the captive prisoner of your heart to the higher or Karmic Court to dispense final judgment and render an appropriate verdict and compensate the cosmic scales and put the universe back into balance. That, anyway, is often how we feel when the balance of justice seems so horribly and painfully tipped in an offender’s favor. In other words, you don’t have to carry that weight. Knowing all will be recompensed in some way as God of Karma or the Laws of the Universe sees fit.

So are you ready? Have you tried each day’s tips, done the work and moved to the brink of forgiveness? If you can muster the belief or even the possibility that ultimate justice exists, that can be enough to let go entirely. Remember, each day you hold onto the past and the pain of the past, you let it harden in a heart that is supposed to be soft and open and filled with things like love and compassion and kindness and peace and happiness. If that is not yet the stuff and substance of your heart, try going through the step or applying the tips again, perhaps more conscientiously or more regularly or for a longer period of time before moving onto the next idea.

After all, there is not much that could be more important than releasing the prisoners from your heart to no longer have the dank and steely bars of a prison cell where the open expanse of love should dwell instead.

Forgiveness is probably the hardest thing, Ken. It demands that we are able to “let go” of the things that have hurt us, the things that people have done, etc. I think often we get stuck in the trap of saying “I’ll forgive if they will just…” admit? acknowledge? change? Fill in whatever word you like, but it’s so true. The real truth is that the majority of people aren’t going to do that. True forgiveness has to include understanding that the other person involved may never do any of those things. For me, that’s the challenge. It’s also easy to say we can’t offer forgiveness if someone isn’t seeking it – they truly believe (or at least say they believe) that they have done nothing wrong and we are the problem. That’s a stalemate. There’s a lot to think about here.Lisa recently posted … Soup of the Week &#8211; Creamy Kohlrabi Carrot Edition

Yes, forgiveness is proactive, not reactive. At its truest level, anyway, it doesn’t wait for the offending party to change and make restitution. It simply lets go and sincerely desires what’s best for the other person. It reminds me of the Biehls after their daughter, Amy, was pulled from her car and stabbed to death by a mob in Cape Town. She was only 26 years old and had been there researching women’s rights and to fight against segregation in South Africa. The mob assumed that since she was white, she was evil and deserved a terrible death. The amazing thing is that her parents returned to console the killers’ families and ended up hiring one of the killers and eventually loving him like family.

The human spirit is capable of so much more than we usually allow it. We fear and hang on to hurt and replay it and feel the need to seek justice against real or perceived wrongs done to us. Being able to Gandhi-like forgive our offenders, even when they delight in the offense, is a spiritual act that is difficult, but deeply rewarding and freeing.

I know this might sound horrible and beautiful. I have never been a forgiver. Hurt me once and we are done. Reading this blog this morning has changed my perspective. Thank you so much for sharing. In this case, sharing literally was, caring.

You absolutely made my day, Joy. You are why I do what I do here. Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

Just remember, a moment’s perspective change is usually much easier than applying the changed perspective to a moment’s hurt. Feel free to return here to work out some of the tips I provide in the comments when those inevitable hurts arise in life by a bunch of imperfect people trying to make it all work and stumbling over each others feet more often than not! 🙂

But what Kenny doesn’t mention is that forgiving, rather than being the free pass from prison it is advertised as, and that a willing practitioner would covet, can be, but isn’t always, the prison itself.

So what happens if you actually send the letter to your offender instead of destroying it? Could such a letter prove to be poison pen or blackmail?

As well, i had been taught by the actions of the people around me, that forgiving meant GAMBLING YOUR FUTURE that a person will change for the better, or to use more poetic terms, GIVING up all hope FOR a better future. This was also what Lily Tomlin REALLY said (she was a Christian.) Is this article saying we’ve been lied to?

Also, Mahatma Gandhi is an idiot. Today, the strong never forgive. They’re always pursuing their offenders, legally or otherwise. Everyone, without a single exception. I have sought to exact revenge out of fear i’d appear weak for forgiving.

I suppose, in some cases, it could turn to that. But remember, the purpose is to let go of the pent-up feelings. It’s to render a release of stored anger and resentment and pain.

To forgive is to let go of the hate and to release the burden of retribution. It is to let God or karma or whatever pick up the responsibility of recompense. Forgiveness does NOT mean to therefore accept the repentant back into your life. To forgive a child molester means to let the past go and actually want what’s best for the molester. It does NOT mean to let him babysit your kids or make him your best friend or even to refuse to testify against him in court. What’s best for the soul of the molester very well may be serving 10 years behind bars. But the molested doesn’t have to serve 10 years behind anger and hatred with him. That is what forgiveness is. So there is absolutely no giving up hope for a better future or gambling your future on whether the other person changes. Your forgiveness is not dependent on their repentance. It is a choice within the forgiver independent of the choice the molester makes about changing. You are giving up hating the molester (or whoever) even if the molester hasn’t given up molesting. This is demonstrably difficult. But let’s not confuse forgiveness with repentance.

Gandhi was not talking about the politically strong or financially powerful or the physically fit. The strength Gandhi was referring to was an inner strength of character. To hold onto pain and hatred and blame is the path of least resistance. It is easy and natural and understandable. To forgive an offender, especially when the offender has not changed, is morally very difficult. That is the kind of strength he was talking about. By the way, it is not always revenge that justice is sought. I would seek justice if someone stole my car. Car thieves should not be able to keep other people’s property. But I can forgive him, hope for the best, pray for him, even love him and still think he should fulfill the consequences of his actions.

Would love to know what you think of my reply, Rohan Roger David Zener.

Oooh, that’s always been my problem; transferring the responsibility of recompense to God. Because what if God just lets the molesters off His hook too? Which i’ve no doubt He does, given that the only crime in His book, is unbelief in Him, and poßibly also realising it’s partially about having your cake and eating it too (Jesus’s story: he came both to fulfill and to abolish God’s Law;; Ephesians vs James: works are both redundant and neceßary; faith alone is both sufficient and insufficient, going by works’ nature alone.) Though i’ve heard it argued that Timothy wraps it all up with “people who do not do as God commands, by definition, do not believe in Him” but this too, is ambiguous, especially as there’s no way to know what God actually wants, since He is known to tell lies to His own people (and even instruct them to tell lies.) [Exodus 4-7] Given that Jesus didn’t give a damn about the Laws initially given by God in the Old Testament, calling them the work of man, it stands to reason, that one need only invoke “The Lord Your God” in their every action…and they’re fully off God’s hook. God comes before any person, and loving any given person before God, is “having a god before God” and hence against the first Commandment. And if God wills one to die, it’s reprehensible to preserve that life. Even if it’s a loved one of yours. Hence, it’s no surprise that Christians turn out totally depraved, thinking that the only viable morality is theocentric; “with God/gods as the central focus”. I personally, would prefer to serve ten years behind hatred and resentment, than a hundred under a domineer. Because you can take breaks from hatred you aim, but not from ultimata aimed at you. So you on the other hand, would you rather serve 10 years behind resentment, or 100 years under a domestic terrorist? I can see though, why you see forgiving as a Get-out-of-jail-free card, albeit for the practitioner. But i see it as a crystal prison, as the story never actually ends there;

Forgiveneß being independent of repentance is precisely WHY it’s lunacy. It may be in Aramaic, literally “untying”, but whom you’re really untying, is your own molester from her feeling of guilt. And she thanks you…by TYING YOU OR ANOTHER DOWN IN HER PLACE. See, molesters and other griefers don’t neceßarily target the same person all the time. And especially Sun Zi, legendary general in ancient China, knew better than to take a path with any more resistance than another he was aware of. Also, there’s a quote by Lorne Lanning arguing AGAINST forgiveneß:

“We had forgotten our past, and now it was costing us our future…and even our souls.”

As well, you can never actually be free if you die as a result, can you! I hope you can see by now, why i’m tempted by all my conscience to call your article “Are You Finally Ready to Go to Prison on My Behalf?” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said “Nobody is more hopeleßly enslaved than he who believes, falsely, that he is free”, which can also point to forgiving people in fact being imprisoned beyond all hope. Am i supposed to also forgive other such monsters as Katherine Knight, Jodi Arias, and Abraham Garcia, for their crimes even though i myself am not a victim? What kind of crazy is next?

1. I don’t believe for a nanosecond that God only cares about belief. How we live our lives is more important than who we believe in, at least while here on earth. My faith is not one that believes that faith is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Faith, for that matter, is belief acted upon. So both are critical. Repentance is required for divine forgiveness. While I recognize that some Christians may hold otherwise, that is not doctrine I can accept. To think that God does not care how we treat others is to hold to a handful of scriptural references while ignoring the whole thrust of Biblical teachings. So to think that God will simply free the molester is not fathomable to me. As for the seeming contradictions in the Bible between works and faith, they really don’t exist. You have to remember that the New Testament never existed until much later. There were only a series of epistles from Apostles. So where the church was teaching the idea that we can work our way to heaven, a corrective would be sent that emphasizes God’s grace. Then, where the church was overemphasizing grace elsewhere, a corrective would be sent underscoring the truth that “faith without works is dead.” So again, no real contradiction exists once the historical context is understood. Almost anything can be read into anyone’s writing if it’s taken out of context, as scripture often is.

2. Much of what you say theologically just doesn’t make sense. How could anyone know who God wills to die? How does anyone even know IF God wills ANYONE to die? Of course we would do what we morally could to keep a loved one alive. The idea that we can presume to know that God wants any particular person dead is ridiculous. No one in a normative Biblical faith believes that. “Christians turn out totally depraved”? Really? Not by any scientific studies of faith, anyway. Faith-based believers are happier than unbelievers, do more good, give more to charitable causes and devote more of their personal time to those causes. Depraved? I wish more of the world were so depraved!

3. I simply don’t understand your question whether I would prefer serving 10 years under resentment or 100 years under a domestic terrorist. How are the two related? Who wouldn’t prefer any amount of resentment to terror? It’s like asking if you prefer being angry for a day or being attacked by ravenous dogs every day for a year. What? I would prefer neither. There is no scenario where it would possibly be one or the other, so what’s the point of the question? One can actually be free of hatred and resentment AND either be free of terror or fight against it. Here’s the thing: You can hate an idea or a situation without maintaining hate for the people who inflicted you with the idea or situation. You can free yourself of both, even if not always simultaneously.

4. Do you really think a molester will be free of the guilt for the grotesqueness of molestation simply for the victim forgiving him? Do molesters really resist molesting again because of guilt, then once forgiven by the molested, suddenly feels free to molest again? Seems silly to me. But let’s assume you’re correct for the sake of the argument. Nothing in what I suggest requires the forgiver to tell the molester she forgives him. It’s an internal experience in the heart of the victim. Forgiveness also does not require befriending the offender. You can prosecute the person because it’s the right thing to do AND free yourself of a life of hatred at the same time. These are not contradictory or mutually exclusive conditions.

5. I have no idea what you mean by this: “you can never actually be free if you die as a result, can you! I hope you can see by now, why I’m tempted by all my conscience to call your article “Are You Finally Ready to Go to Prison on My Behalf?” Die as a result of what? So I guess I don’t know how to respond to it.

6. As for forgiving others you were not a victim to, it doesn’t make sense to me. What does it even mean to say that I forgive Hitler? Perhaps I can forgive him of the effect his evil had on my consciousness, but I have no authority to forgive him for what he did to others. I agree with you that to forgive someone else’s offender is another kind of crazy. It turns the meaning of forgiveness on its head.

7. Finally, I leave you with my own quote: “Nobody is more hopelessly enslaved than he who is free and falsely believes he is not.”

My responses are as follows:
1: I’m well aware of how Timothy solved the supposed contradiction; somebody who does not live a “righteous” life by definition does not believe in the Biblical/Abrahamic God, he said. But you still must remember, this is the same, evil, callous, deceitful, quick-to-anger God of the Old Testament, who even condoned slavery (God is the same yesterday, today, and forever; remember?) And you wonder why the Southern United States (formerly American Confederacy) fought hardest to DEFEND slavery? And it’s made even worse by the fact that God deceives and lies, which is why i’d GLADLY settle for hell.

3: I know that! But i also understand, you can’t simply TAKE A BREAK from terror or danger aimed at you. In fact, some bullies and haters believe that i, for one, deserved to be picked on all my life, meaning that they condone such cruelty and crimes, and especially impersonation of authority positions, eg, police constable, judge, magistrate, or military general or colonel. Anyway, it’s the “prisoners’ dilemma” that i should’ve mentioned before. Two may not cooperate even when it’s in their best interest. In this case, when two men who’ve harmed each other, meet in another run-in, each can forgive, or retaliate against (or deceive), the other. If they both forgive (cooperate), then that’s nyarmu (all there is.) But if they both retaliate (betray), they each live with a decade of resentment. If only ONE betrays, that one goes free and the other is trapped under a century-long period of slavery to his new master. This is where your black-and-white logic as a layman, fails.

4: Many humans are morally bankrupt and so can escape guilt easily. Of course this has an effect on people’s minds. In fact i often imagine, myself, scenarios with character who have no qualms with wasting REFORMED VILLAINS http://antagonist.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Reformed_Villains but of course that’s beside the point. There are worse people who simply do not understand guilt, nor feel it themselves.

5: Some continued crimes and other injuries can indeed kill their recipients. I know i, exempli gratia, was nearly rendered mindleß by drugs, but i managed to pull through in the end by building up a resistance and tricking the doctors into discontinuing each succeßive regimen. Another person who receives such treatment MAY NOT BE SO LUCKY. All that i have in the way of plans for my violators, is capital punishment. A bit cruel and harsh, i’m sure you think, but it’ll deter others from the same offences. But as a result, i’ve since taken on a twisted-mentat-type personality that would terrify laymen in legion, way more than any fictional villain.

6: I’m glad you look at that rationally. This also proves Jesus was mad. Hitler, though, may have had a point, because the Jews are infamous for playing the victim so as to attract the support of other nations around the world. Worst of all, we all fall for their dupery. But Hitler also murdered many more people than just Jews (he was a eugenicist, you see.) That was his worst mistake, and he ended up betrayed by his highest-ranking generals, and suspected Jodl, Burgdorf, Krebs, and Keitel.

7: You have the right to remain silent; anything you say or do shall serve as evidence adverse to you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to any police officer, and to have an attorney present before and/or during questioning. If you should be insolvent for an attorney, one shall be provided to you free of charge by the police department.

See, your last quote is a contradiction; you said, that by falsely believing you’re a slave or prisoner, you BECOME the slave/prisoner, and so it’s no longer false and you REALISE you’re a slave/prisoner! After which, any belief you gain that you’re a free man, is false…unleß, by your logic, you can ACTUALLY MAKE yourself free by believing it so! Is THAT how forgiveneß is meant to work? See, such turnarounds as mine here are precisely WHY a right to remain silent would be preferable! At the end of the day though, i’ve made my point – that the strategy of forgiveneß is actually the prison of its practitioners; not their way out. You saw my crystal prison drawing of Son Goku, didn’t you. I call it “Forgiveness”.

Leave a response

A Walk Through HappinessGet my FREE eBook and monthly newsletter by subscribing below!

Email Address*

First Name

Your email will NEVER be shared with anyone

About Me

My name is Ken Wert, the founder of M2bH. My purpose here is to teach you how to live a richer life of greater purpose and meaning, of mind-blowing possibility and deeper, more soul-satisfying happiness than you ever dreamt was possible. Join us on this happy adventure as you learn how to unlock your hidden potential to enjoy the rewards of a life well lived. Read more ...